


Chrysanthemum Morifolium

by thegoodthebadandthenerdy



Category: 9-1-1: Lone Star (TV 2020)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Developing Relationship, F/F, Friendship, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Healing, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Sad with a Happy Ending, Spoilers for 2x02, Team as Family, Teasing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-01
Updated: 2021-02-01
Packaged: 2021-03-18 17:02:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,214
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29121630
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thegoodthebadandthenerdy/pseuds/thegoodthebadandthenerdy
Summary: It's about what people see and what they don't. What they don't do and what they try to do. How they rally and how they bounce back.;It's about Marjan and Nancy, and Nancy and the 126, and Marjan and her family.
Relationships: Firehouse 126 Crew & Nancy Gillian (9-1-1 Lone Star), Marjan Marwani & Paul Strickland (9-1-1 Lone Star), Nancy Gillian/Marjan Marwani (9-1-1 Lone Star)
Comments: 19
Kudos: 30





	Chrysanthemum Morifolium

**Author's Note:**

> i just think 911ls would greatly benefit from wlw

It’s been three days since the quiet spread itself in mourning drape over the station. It seemed to remember every crevice, a ghost walking through the walls of the renovated home. The lights seemed to dim themselves out of respect. Words were exchanged for knowing glances, hands designated to be clapped comfortingly on shoulders. It’s been seventy-two hours since the safety came undone on all of them.

When you take the job, you know the risk. You ask your loved ones carry it like a ten pound weight. You keep your will up to date and your affairs in order. From the very first moment, it’s _known_. Tragedy strikes just as random as lightning. But there are times when it becomes all the more apparent. When you stop and think _if I had been an inch to the left, if I had fallen back or gone ahead._ It’s the sword tip with its point scraping the finest hairs on your head: it just as surely could have been any of us.

Now, when she wakes at the rankled dawn, when she closes her eyes at night, Marjan can only see the false memory burned into the backs of her eyelids. Local FD in solemn suit. Her old captain paired with any range of one of her old friends, knocking on her parents’ door to deliver the news. Baltimore or Miami, it’s not all that far apart in the eyes of fear. She pictures her mother’s strong face and the way it would break. She knows exactly the way the grief would strike her father’s lovely brown eyes.

But the days keep treading and so she stands to meet them head on. Suiting up is still the only way she knows how to quell the ragged parts of herself. The only way she can reckon with the sadness and pay respect to the man she knew. It’s how she takes this thing that has been given to her with such sharp edges: boots to feet, helmet to head, her guilt washed away for another twelve hours or eighteen.

It’s taken her years to be able to wade through the way grief idles, and still she finds that there’s so much more to learn. The knowing that lights and never goes out lives in her, but it seems like every day it casts itself over another forgotten, spider-webbed corner.

By the third afternoon, she’s restless. Sleep isn’t fruitful and her muscles burn with the extra gym time. But when she turns the corner, something low in her bays like an old hound.

Nancy doesn’t look up when the sound of Marjan’s boots sounds ahead of her. She sits sternly in front of the EMTs’ lockers, her hands gripping the bench so hard it makes the muscles along the backs of her arm tick. She isn’t crying, but her shoulders visibly tremble with effort underneath her unbuttoned uniform top, open over the crisp-white tee that wears wrinkled at the collar.

She doesn’t ask her to leave, a leniency Marjan accepts without question. She settles on the other end of the bench with a sigh, facing away from the sight of one empty cubby put between the drastic fullness of the ones at its sides. Her elbows dig into her jeans dig into her skin hard enough to pinch. Not hurt, the hurt’s all the way up in her gut. Scrappy as it pushes against her lungs.

They sit in that gossamer silence. So thin it’s see-through, so faded it’s tearing. Nancy breathes in and Marjan breathes out and like that it’s so close to living. But close and almost and should have and nearly, they don’t carry the same weight they did four days ago.

Marjan steals a glance at Nancy on the cusp of her peripheral. Her eyes are shut, faint and freckled, and the line of her throat pinches with each inhale that slips past her lips. For Marjan—Marwani the Fixer, hotshot, young buck—it’s like getting swatted on the nose. It’s a scene that seems to say _you missed it, and you’re still missing it._

She’s learning here, with this city, with these people. And she knows now better than she ever has that there are some things that can’t be fixed with a smile or the kind of trick that gets blasted across the six o’clock news. But just because she knows it doesn’t make it any easier, and even she has to gather her nerve sometimes.

“Aaliyah,” Marjan says softly some time later, clearing her throat only once. This is old pain, dull and uneager. She can bear it the same way she bears the weight of her gear: in the hope that it’ll mean something to someone else. “She was the first person I ever lost on the job. When I was a probie with my first crew, she took me under her wing. She was the old guard, you know? First woman to ever rank lieutenant at our station. And she was…she was good, and kind, and sweet to a fault. There wasn’t a day that went by that I wasn’t constantly under her feet trying to soak up whatever knowledge she had to give.

“Eight months later we got called out to a three alarm in an apartment complex. By the time we got there it was about mitigating damage, there wasn’t anyone _to_ help. But there was this mom on the sidelines sobbing for her kid. These low croons, moaning like she was in pain. There’s not a worse sound in the world.

“Aaliyah went in after the kid. Of course she did. There was—to her, there was never another choice. She used to say she would go as far as her legs would take her, and then even farther than that by hope. The place collapsed, and I, I don’t really remember what happened after that. I lost days, and it was like when I woke up I was hearing the bells for the first time in my life. Not everyone saw that, saw me, because they were in their own grief and I was the probie who had to learn, but one of my teammates could tell it was more than that. If he hadn’t, I don’t know if I’d be in Texas. I don’t know if I’d still be a firefighter at all.

“So I see you and your grief, and that’s okay. You take as long as you need. But you’re a part of our team. You’re a part of _my_ team. We don’t do this alone.” She exhales, shaky, but she’s grateful that the tears don’t come this time. Grateful she can be steady for the woman next to her.

Nancy looks up, flushed in a rolling mix of guilt and fervor and relief. The skin around her eyes is raw, her lips pale and chapped. But she breathes in, breathes out. “Okay,” she says.

“Okay,” Marjan agrees.

;

“Keep telling yourself that,” someone heckles with a good-natured grin in their throat. It sets off a chain of squabbling, like crows lined up on the power lines.

They’ve crowded in for that taut before-time. Before the alarms and the fire, the blood and the shouts. Here there are no axes or kinked hoses, no hoarse throats and dry mouths trying to find slick purchase to call out. This is unsullied of all that, an affectionately honed family time with smoothies as green and ripe as the mold on the cheese festering in the fridge.

Marjan’s first mistake is to try to sneak in. Any other day she knows the best defense is a good offense. You sweep in, you laugh like you’re already in on the joke, you _don’t_ look like the kid trying to sneak back into their parents’ house after curfew. Downtime turns even the most serious of firefighters into sharks in the water, finely attuned for embarrassment.

It’s not that she’s trying to keep anything to herself for long, but she wouldn’t mind reveling for just a _little_ longer. Her routine for the last couple weeks has come to include the independent coffee shop down the road from her place. She steals away early in the morning, _long_ before the first crowd, to meet up with Nancy. They get their drinks from the squat drive-through window because the doors have been effectively shuttered for months, and take them to the parking lot. They sip coffee-and-tea while leaned up against their respective vehicles, most times chatting, but there are some mornings where they’re quiet, glad to not be alone. It’s an appreciated interlude before a grueling shift either way, but Marjan can’t say she doesn’t enjoy the company.

There’s nothing particularly illicit about it, but she knows that in the simple act of never mentioning it she’s incurred plenty of ribbing to come. She’s proud, actually, when Mateo steps up to the plate, loosing one of his sweet smiles, so like that of a mischievous kid brother.

“Where’ve you been?” he asks, and it’s the creaky board going up the stairs. A hum settles, waiting for her answer, and she knows then she’s going to have to repay him for this, style of which pending.

She must look as unprepared as she feels, because when Paul wagers a look over his shoulder, he simply laughs under his breath before turning back to layering cream cheese onto one of the everything bagels he keeps in the fridge with his name written on the package three different ways.

Marjan’s second mistake is trying to deflect, it’s one of habit. She knows she doesn’t have to, but it’s like sometimes her body forgets what her mind knows. “Here. Out in the—” She waves the hand with the red herring cup in some general direction. If she weren’t herself she’d call foul on the _clear_ fabrication, but as it stands, she’s never one to back down. Now it’s a battle of wills, and she’s got plenty of that.

“Again?” TK jokes. He lifts his coffee mug, stamped so it’s clear what firehouse it belongs to, to cover up his shit-eating grin. Marjan isn’t five-years-old, and that’s the only thing that keeps her from sticking her tongue out at him. It’s close, though. A very near thing.

“Hey,” Judd cuts in overtop the clamor starting to rise up. For a second, Marjan thinks it’s done, but then his mouth curves and she adds him to her list for retribution. She’s thinking a bucket of water and a well-timed, wobbly trip across the catwalk. “If Marjan wants to be out in the—” And here he tries to mimic her poorly conceived gesture, but it comes across, to her at least, like a shadow puppet for a beached whale and she _really_ hopes she doesn’t look like that. “Then that’s her business. Though we _can_ all kindly suggest she bring enough to share with the class if she’s gonna insist on flaunting the good coffee in front of us.”

“It’s _tea_ ,” she says with a triumphant grin, making a grab for the upper hand. There’s a five-second broadcast delay, but the room peels into gluttonous, wonderful laughter. It’s not that funny, but this is the first. The first time in a month things have felt okay enough to indulge in something like laughter that makes you sick to your stomach.

Things aren’t right, because they’ll now forever be the table with the leg shaved a fraction of an inch too short. The one that stands straight and proud but still lists under a certain amount of pressure applied here or there. But they’re not undone, either. They know what they’re made of, and it’s tougher stuff.

Later, once they’ve all dispersed, Mateo is the only one left in the kitchen. He has a spray bottle in one hand and a rag in the other, but he’s taking his time, counting his blessings that it’s not his turn to clean out the shower drains.

When Nancy comes in, Gillian as she still is in his head, he inclines his chin in quiet greeting so as not to break the silence. It’s been a while since the silences were anything less than an unbearable weight. She tips the cup in her hand toward him, and he recognizes it instantly as the match to Marjan’s. He isn’t sure why that hadn’t occurred to him yet; he’s seen them talking more often than before.

It’s not that the fire crew and EMTs aren’t friendly, it’s just that. _Friendly._ The jobs intersect so closely that to be anything else puts lives at risk. But amidst the rebuilding of the 126, they had to put their team together first, figure out how they fit with one another. Nancy and Tim already had their own thing going, and for Mateo at least, the probie trying to fit in everywhere else, it was something that felt sort of untouchable. So it was a colleagues-not-friends situation, the kind where you wave if you see them in the produce section at the grocery store, but you don’t feel obligated to go over and strike up a conversation. He always figured there would come a time once they were established where they’d figure out how to mix the teams, but none of them thought it’d come like this.

If Marjan’s taking the first step, he decides, so can he. There won’t always be time to wait. “That place any good?” he asks just before she disappears around the doorframe.

“It’s a little out of my way, but it gets me out of bed on time,” she says with a smile that looks familiar again.

;

TK notices Gillian— _Nancy,_ he reminds himself—out of the corner of his eye. He’s working a hose off one of the rigs and it requires a steady concentration and a steadier hand so as not to fumble a hundred pounds anywhere other than where it’s meant to be. But it’s as he’s rolling it out, nudging it along with the toe of his boot, that he finds her still there. For a moment she’s innocuous, it’s never been out of question to see her around during the day, but the image clashes when he realizes she’s dressed out in the same jeans and t-shirt he saw her arrive in that morning.

He kicks the last few feet out and loops back toward the beginning. “If you’re waiting for Marjan, it’s her day off,” he says without thinking. It neatly tramples the rule he has about assuming things. _It makes an ass out of you and me,_ says the voice in the back of his head that sounds suspiciously like his father.

“Sorry,” he adds when she looks up from where her head is bowed over her phone, fingers running intently across the screen. “Foot, mouth, they’re best friends. I’m working on it.”

Nancy shakes her head a little, her lips twitching in amusement. Score one for his disposition, he thinks, which isn’t so much innately charming as it is endearing after prolonged exposure. The distinction matters; one is that much harder to shake off.

“I know, about Marjan I mean. Which is why I told her she didn’t have to pick me up, but she claimed it was better for ‘the logistics.’” When she sees the confusion drawn in the thin lines at his temples, she elaborates, “We’ve got a spot for the first showing at the new drive-in.”

“That’s the one that’s showing like, exclusively black and white movies, right?” he asks, turning his eyes to her in as long as it takes her to thumb her belt loops.

“Yeah. I haven’t been to one since I was a kid, and I figured it would be something fun to do without breaking protocols. I bought the second ticket without thinking, so.” She clears her throat. “It worked out though, since Marjan’s never been to one.”

He looks up for real then and spies the tightness at the corner of her mouth, the tension courting the curves of her eyes. A memory pops like a fat flashbulb behind his eyes: Tim and two prized tickets to a Bogart retrospective. _Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship,_ parroted back and forth between him and Nancy in increasingly mutinous Bogart impressions to see who could get the other the laugh first. He hadn’t thought anything of it in the moment, still the new kid on the block, and he hasn’t thought of it at all since.

TK knows grief differently. Knows what it is to be the one who causes it, and the one that wrestles with it firsthand from those actions. But this is different than watching it play out across his father’s face alongside pain and love, this is feeling it as a trickledown, watching it take hold of his teammates and knowing that it isn’t his fault. The thing about taking the blame is that it gives him purpose. Not having that means he doesn’t know where to offer his hands to help. He watches these people he loves struggle, and he’s helpless. Who is there to make accountable for this? Who is there to shoulder the blame? He’s coming to terms with the fact that there isn’t, that this is different than a faulty wire or a blown fuse or a campfire, but it’s still outpacing him.

In his life he’s felt overwhelmingly human more times than he can count. Fighting fires is a rush, but it’s humbling all the same. Those two stuck together has always left him with the taste of something like isolation in his mouth, but he realizes, looking at her face now, they’re all scraped raw. They’re all overwhelmingly human, looking to one another for a sign that they aren’t alone.

There’s a sizeable guarantee that he won’t understand a word of what she’s talking about. The oldest his movies get are the original _Star Wars_ trilogy, after all. But her joy is a beginning step that’s hard to take, and he wants to meet her halfway. “What’s playing?” he asks, and doesn’t turn away when she replies.

She starts out slow, poking and prodding at what he does know and what he doesn’t in a surprisingly keen effort to tailor her words to her audience. Once she finds her stride, though, she takes off.

He moves throughout his tasks on muscle memory, and she follows him subconsciously, lending a hand without ever breaking her stream. He likes the pattern of her voice, moving between summary and bites of trivia with the practiced meter of someone that actually cares. When she rounds the corner from one movie to the next, TK’s hit with the odd sense that he’s the better for it. That, if quizzed, he’d know a little something about a little something. 

Marjan finds them half an hour later like the office slackers around the water cooler, TK leaned against the door of one of the rigs with his arms folded across his chest, Nancy stood in front of him, her hands gesturing sedately. It’s a sweet scene, TK’s face bunched in concentration and Nancy like the flood gates burst, her features for once unburdened.

Marjan has her keys hooked around her finger and it’s their cool jangle that keeps her from being able to sneak up on them entirely.

TK raises a distracted hand to her. “Hey, Marjan,” cut through with “Wait, isn’t he the guy from the other movie, with the horse—” She gets more attention from the leather watchband around his wrist, but when Nancy looks back over her shoulder, smiling through her talking point, Marjan finds she’s not all that bothered by it.

Her hand glances over Nancy’s shoulder, a fleeting warmth. “Sorry I’m late,” she says as they wind down. “Traffic was wicked. The grannies were tailgating _me.”_

“Well, Nancy took the time to school me on classic Hollywood, which is something I’m pretty sure my parents have been trying and failing to do my entire life, so.” He shrugs, a paper doll smile cut and strung on his face. “The captain of the 126 thanks you.”

She matches him, palms moving back. “I couldn’t let you keep thinking Jimmy Stewart was a news anchor.”

Marjan makes a sound like _ohoho._ “Dude, seriously?” she asks, a grin splitting plum purple lips.

He flips his watch up for impossible scrutiny, the tops of his ears humming pink, and declares, “I have no idea what she’s talking about. Aren’t you guys going to be late, or something?”

Nancy flips her phone out to check the time for herself. When she sees that TK’s not, in fact, just bullshitting them, she takes the corner of her mouth between her teeth. Marjan, looking over her shoulder, says, “We probably should, right? I doubt traffic’s any better.”

“I know a back route, if you’re good with passenger side navigators. Should be a straight shot there.”

For her part, Marjan looks delighted at the concept. She holds her arm out toward the bay doors. “Then lead the way, Ms. Gillian,” she says, and it sounds Jane Austen levels of indecent to TK’s ears, but he declines to comment out of the goodness of his heart. All good things to those who wait. ( _Silence of the Lambs,_ 1991, a perfectly reasonable age for a movie.)

;

Mateo breaks first. His shoulders sag, a rough breath expelled from deep in his chest. “How long have they been in there?”

Four watches rise in tandem, each one tutting off the seconds on almost identical faces. Under any other circumstances, the way they’re all stood with the same alert posture, the same black-band watches synchronized down to the minute and raised to their noses, would be funny. In the moment, though, it’s simple unease.

Judd says, “Three minutes. Four, now.”

Marjan groans, even though she’s looking at the proof on her own watch. “That’s it?”

“That’s it,” Paul agrees.

They’ve lined up like this: Paul, then Marjan next to Nancy. Judd, leaned against the mop slowly eking water, and TK on the end, foot tapping ravenously. Likes switches flipped, their necks are craned to watch Captains Strand and Vega where they’re sequestered in the former’s office, door shut. Door _shut_. It’s blasphemous. It’s cataclysmic. It’s enough to get them to blatantly abandon their chores in favor of gawking.

“What about now?” TK mumbles through his thumb tucked neat against his mouth.

“About a minute more than when Mateo asked.”

Marjan gave up biting her nails in high school, which is well behind her now. She hasn’t had the urge to go back on that in years, but the unsure minutes stretching out ahead of them leave her close to the brink. It’s not that the door’s shut, not for her anyway. And it’s not the whole team has found the scent of worry like the floppy blood hounds that trail through the woods looking for bodies. It’s that when Captain Strand called for Captain Vega in that softened way of his, he called her Tommy.

He’s good about showing respect. Doling out credit where credit’s due. Being a model of good behavior for his team. He’s good about professional lines and personal lines and where and when they’re crossed. But _Tommy, can I catch a minute with you in my office?_ It was too… _too._ Too many red flags for Marjan to brush off until they could get answers.

“Incoming,” Paul coughs and they disperse, shot to all four corners with the single directive to ‘act natural.’ They fail immediately, spectacularly, and perfectly, all in one go. Judd’s mop left an obvious trail behind him, and TK’s whole body is spring-coiled enough anyone could tell even from a distance, and Paul isn’t actually doing anything at all.

Captain Strand and Captain Vega approach them with the kind of amusement teachers reserve for elementary students. When the kids are doing something inappropriate but funny, and the teachers know under no circumstances can they do anything to condone or encourage it, even if they are only human. They pause, Captain Vega hiding her smile behind the side of her hand, before dividing and conquering.

“Nancy,” Captain Vega says first, “A word?”

Once they’re out of earshot, Captain Strand preemptively strikes, answering questions before the curious faces in front of him can regain their bearings. Yes, everything is fine. No, Gillian is not in trouble. No, neither are any of them.

“I received a call this afternoon,” he explains, “The young man Rosewater—the young man _Tim_ was treating the night of the volcano, as well as his mother, have asked if it would be all right to pay us a socially-distanced visit this afternoon. After speaking with Captain Vega, and given the circumstances, I agreed.

“Now, listen, if you would _like_ to be present, that’s fine, and if you don’t want to, just say the word. We’re not asking anyone to go beyond their means here, all right? Captain Vega and I can be charming enough for ten firefighters and EMTs.”

Mateo murmurs _oh, man,_ under his breath and a ripple of agreement passes over them. They rock back onto their heels, deflating like tents with the poles dragged out from under them. Not every topple is cracking brick and twisted metal, so seems to say the moment. Sometimes it’s just that, fabric kissing the earth on impact. A rolling dust cloud and not much more.

“I’ll be there, Cap,” Judd says. First one in, always. “Not my first rodeo, definitely not my last.”

“Yeah, me too,” TK tacks on, followed by Paul’s, “Count on it,” and Mateo’s inaudible assent. There comes a lapse of silence, perfectly laid out and unfulfilled. Instead of turning toward her, the rest of the team keeps their eyes on their captain.

“Marjan?” Captain Strand asks quietly. She pulls her eyes away from Nancy—who exists in that moment as a level chin, hands folded properly at the small of her back, a quick nod. “I’d like to be there, sir,” Marjan replies.

Captain Strand’s face is wiped with pride for his team. He looks to each of them, meeting their eyes briefly before moving on. “All right,” he says, with a clap of his hands. “Let’s actually _try_ to look busy for the next hour, huh? And I know this is a particularly emotional prospect, but that doesn’t negate masks and distancing. Let’s keep it respectful in every way here, people.”

Once they’re dismissed, Marjan seeks Nancy out. She’s where Captain Vega left her, one hand loosely gripping the opposite elbow. She looks up when Marjan approaches, but her eyes are already half a mile away.

“Hey, what’d you decide?” Marjan asks. They’ve had to learn the way of all great friends on a fast track over the last two months. How to cut through the bullshit when times call for it. When to skip ‘are you okay?’ because it’s nothing more than a waste of breath, and there’s bigger things to be attended to.

“I just need to see him for myself,” Nancy says, her eyes pulling shut and her hand sinking further into the notch of her elbow. “Every night for two months I’ve been praying for clarity, for _meaning._ Something I can understand. And the lives we save, that’s about all that’s made perfect sense.”

Marjan can remember a time when even that wasn’t enough for her. The swallow-me-whole guilt that had paced her for months after Aaliyah’s death. But if this is what keeps Nancy fighting, then it’s good enough for her.

The next hour locks together from minute to minute, floorboards sliding together to bridge the unseen gap. Every time they try to stray further than eyesight, they end up gravitating back toward the comfort of each other’s presence. Eventually, they give up to loiter between the rigs, Captain Strand among them.

Paul tosses an arm around Marjan’s shoulders and she heaves a grateful sigh, leaning there to keep silent watch of her team. TK and Mateo are talking quietly off to the side, Judd just behind them. His eyes are closed, but Marjan thinks he’s listening in. When Captain Vega joins them, coming to stand shoulder to shoulder with Captain Strand, she notices the absence. “Has anyone seen Gillian?” she asks, eyes clipping around in a rough head count.

When the consensus is reached that no one’s seen her since the announcement, Captain Strand doesn’t get so far as the second syllable of Marjan’s name before she sets off, Judd not a step behind her. She doesn’t know how it can still surprise her. She _knows_ his heart, knows the good in there, but she’s still touched by the gesture.

They find her in the kitchen, leaned over the counter, facing away from the door. Her back moves in shallow, hitching breaths, all the more noticeable with her fingers laced together on the back of her neck, keeping it level. Marjan goes to her, leaving Judd in the doorway, and puts a palm to the nearest wrist. It’s just a shift, but Nancy undoes her fingers from themselves enough to grab Marjan’s and cradle them even at the awkward angle.

“Nance,” Marjan murmurs low enough for only her to hear. She braces her free palm against the counter so she can lean in. “Hey, can you look at me for a second?”

Nancy inhales roughly against the crook of her arm, and if it weren’t already obvious she’d been crying, her stuffy nose would see to that. It takes her a few more stuttering breaths, but she straightens up and sniffs again. Her raw eyes, the miserable lines of her face, it all makes Marjan’s chest ache with something so much _more_. Feelings muddle underneath her heart, and if she had a part of herself to spare it would have to pause to wonder.

“Sorry, I’m okay,” Nancy says in a voice so thin it’s almost unrecognizable as her own. She’s still got the tips of Marjan’s fingers in her hand, and her grip spasms a little as the lie tumbles off her tongue. Behind them, Judd hums, neither derisive nor judgmental, but decidedly without belief. 

“You’ll forgive me if I don’t believe that,” Marjan says with a small, wry smile. She takes her thumb and wipes away the residual tears under each of Nancy’s eyes in emphasis. “I’m not going to ask you if you’re okay, and I’m not going to ask you if you can do this. I know you aren’t, and I know you can, okay? And I know you want to. Just tell me what you need to get through this. Whatever it is, I’ll do it.” The last few words come out fiercer than the rest, the full weight of Marjan’s belief in herself propping them up. It makes them ridiculously believable.

“I just need my legs to keep me upright.”

Marjan adjusts their hands, making the hold purposeful. Their fingers close around one another as if drawn out from underneath marble. It’s something of permanence, and Marjan swallows hard. “Okay,” she says. And then, for a blistering second, there’s nothing except absence. _Okay,_ and that’s what it is, without judgement or tax.

She meant what she said—she knows that Nancy can do this. But this isn’t a question of strength or will, nor should it be. This is about the lay of Nancy’s life and how, after her first captain, her friend, stepped down, she had to find the ground underneath her feet as it shifted to accommodate Captain Vega. And how, just after that, with the first thing having barely settled, her best friend, _her_ team, was gone in a blink. Seeing how the world keeps tilting underneath her, Marjan can’t blame her for this fear.

Judd comes up behind them, hovering close but not too much so. His voice is just as kind, just as fierce and caring. “Hey, if you need to, you lean on me. Okay? I can take it. If you can’t, I’ll keep you upright.”

There’s nothing more to say than that.

When the time comes, they line up like this: Captain Vega and Nancy, heads held high. Then Judd, a promise, and Mateo, hair still wet from combing it hastily over the bathroom sink. TK and Paul and Marjan, hands folded respectfully in front of them, and Captain Strand bringing up the end. With their pressed and buttoned uniforms, their prim black masks, their reverent faces showing behind even that, they’re a startling picture of bearing the etched bars on their chests. Sentinels to these stricken halls.

The bay doors have been flung open, and where they stand a few feet inside, Spencer and his mom, same hair same eyebrows same relief, stand a few feet the opposite way. Marjan can’t help but think how small they look in comparison to the rank before them. Or how admirably they face it.

Spencer adjusts the crutch shoved under his arm and pulls a piece of wrinkled notebook paper from his shirt pocket. He delivers the words with the hitch of a valedictorian, careful and clear, looking up every now and then and catching someone’s eyes.

_My name is Spencer Manning. I’m a twenty-year-old pre-med student who, eight weeks ago, underwent severe spinal trauma. It was your colleague, Tim Rosewater, who came to my aid that night, and he’s the reason I’m standing here today. But if he were here, that’s the last thing I would think to thank him for. I would thank him for giving me the opportunity to see my little brother grow up. I would thank him for giving me more days with my mom and my stepdad and my grandmother. I would thank him for giving me the chance to continue pursuing my degree toward the only thing I have ever wanted to do in my life: help. He gave everything he had so I may have these things, and I will strive for the rest of my life to give everything I have in the hopes it honors him._

_But I also know that he would not have been able to help me that night if it weren’t for you all standing before me. So I want to thank you, the firefighters who gave me all the more to fight for when you pulled my friends to safety. And I want to thank you, the courageous EMTs who entered that scene without hesitation. My and my family’s gratitude will never be enough._

Marjan will remember it until the day she dies, each word printed calmly upon the memory at the back of her mind. When she bows her head, she feels the tears slip from her eyes, running to meet the line her mask cuts over the bridge of her nose.

 _Thank you, thank you, thank you,_ says Spencer’s mother, over and over again.

;

Three months comes amidst being able to breathe just a little easier. The violet bruise poaching itself, turning up green and sensitive instead. The morning meetups for coffee and tea, which should have tapered off by now, continue at their steady pace, less out of necessity and more for simple want. The staff at the drive-in starts to call them by name.

Four months sees the inexplicable string tying Marjan and Nancy start to come unraveled. It doesn’t loosen its hold, merely splits and twines anew with each hand to pull them further together. In their free moments, they hover next to one another, hands careful and teeth showing they laugh over their conspiratorial things. One morning Mateo wonders aloud _what they even have to talk about anymore_ and Judd clasps his shoulder, claiming _there are some stones best left unturned,_ all southern-sage and knowing. Paul merely laughs, claiming the age-old _we’ll tell you when you’re older._

By five months, it’s nothing to ask one where the other is if locating her proves to be too troublesome without help. Neither of them are oblivious to this. Marwani-and-Gillian has itself become as notorious as a four letter word. But at the root of the way they’ve grown around one another is respect, pure and rich as soil, and that’s what keeps them in check. To breach the line isn’t entirely out of the question, but they’ve each come to the conclusion on their own that the timing has to be just right. There’s too much running between them for anything else, and it’s been a long time since either of them has had someone know them the way they know each other. All the ugly, heavy things first, and _then_ the little things, the flippant, what’s-your-favorite-color, I-don’t-like-tomatoes things. They don’t take that for anything less precious than what it is.

;

Marjan is so focused on the accidental triple knot in her laces she doesn’t hear the locker room door open. Teeth grit, she pulls hard with her right hand. Immediately, she’s pretty sure she’s only made it worse.

“You’re going to strain something,” Nancy jokes, leaning back against the divider between Mateo and TK’s lockers. At the sound of her voice, Marjan starts. Her fingers fumble, left index slipping through a loop, and she lets out a low laugh. “Not if you give me a heart attack first. What are you doing in here?”

“Looking for you. Which _sort_ of feels like the only thing I do when you’re not around.”

“Oh, yeah?” The topmost knot unsnarls and Marjan doesn’t give herself pause before she sets to the second. She looks up with intent. “I’m here. I’ve been here.”

“Well, that’s the thing. You keep being here, and _I_ keep being here. It stopped being a coincidence a while ago, don’t you think?”

“Nancy, you know, if you don’t say it, I’m gonna say it first.” She’s light when she says it, trying to grease the wheels and give them somewhere to go, but she can’t say she hasn’t thought about how to say this one thing a hundred different ways. She’d only drawn the line at asking Paul for help, or Judd, or TK, because she wanted this moment to be theirs alone. Not with the specter of her best friend’s words in her head, or the Ryders’ enduring marriage, or TK’s well-composed relationship. Just her and the woman she changed coffee shops for.

Nancy doesn’t move, but she gains two inches by the shift in her eyes. They fall on Marjan’s face and stay there for a moment, like she’s trying to remember each detail. “You stepped up for me when we hardly knew each other. And you didn’t back down when things got ugly—you did pretty much the opposite,” she says with the beginnings of a smile that changes her whole face. It’s the look, Marjan realizes. The look people give when they think someone else isn’t watching. She’s felt it at the back of her mind from across the room, from behind the wheel, but as is its way, she’s never seen it head on. In awe, she thinks, _can you believe that’s how she looks at you?_

“When Tim died,” she says, pausing briefly on his name. “It made me realize that I’d lost more than just my best friend. He was my person. And you respected that, you didn’t try to fill his space. You gave me room to _be_ and to _breathe_ , but you didn’t let me lose any more of myself than what I already had. For the last six months you have kept my soul well-fed, Marjan. Because that’s the kind of person you are, someone who fights as hard as you can for those around you. It’s what makes you a damn good firefighter and an even better friend.”

Marjan feels this second as a prick on the back of her neck. It’s not the fear of a precipice or the tug as you leap from the open window. It’s the feeling of having already landed on the bag down below—this, right here, is the fraction of a fraction of a second when your body has just touched it, but before you rebound. When the sky is bare above you, the stars still promising themselves through the smoke, and none of the voices have rushed in, none of the hands have touched you to pull you free, and you can’t feel weight at all. Marjan relishes this second, but knows what comes next will be just as good.

“But I think we’ve passed being just friends, and if you’ll let me, I’d really love to make you dinner and try to figure out how I’m going to kiss you at the end of the night.”

Marjan’s hands, working separate from her mind, pull her laces in a pattern she can’t comprehend. The knots unfurl as Nancy exhales in earnest for what sounds like the first time in half a year. There’s just the sound of the aglets tip-tapping the floor as Marjan lurches back into herself. She gets to her feet, dazzling in her casualness, and asks, “What are you gonna cook for me?”

;

Plumes of doughy steam are coughed up from where the water hits the scorched asphalt in long lines of spray. The scene is bracketed on one side by fire engines and their seemingly endless hoses that litter the ground like discarded toys. Smaller emergency vehicles fan out from there to block the rest from the public. Their lights are still flashing, bright even in the scalding light of day, but the sirens are long over.

From up above, the ground looks like it’s dotted in poppy seeds. The black uniforms and turnout coats shade and blending. Down in the thick of it, it’s up to intuition to find familiar faces in the crawling aftermath. Judd starts calling the roll, flagging down Mateo, who points out TK, who has eyes on Paul, and so on down the line to Marjan with that giddy, still-trying-to-catch-her-breath, we-didn’t-lose-anyone-today grin. Today is one of the good days.

After all the equipment is packed away and the rest of the team loads into the back of the rig, Marjan and Paul stand watch out front. Some ten yards away, Captain Strand has been requisitioned by the fire chief, a man who has been blessed not only with the gift of gab, but the one note focus of a racehorse too. 

“How many times do you think he’s excused himself now?” Marjan asks, tilting her head. Paul matches her degree for degree, and when he folds his arms over his chest, she unwittingly follows suit.

“At least four,” he replies.

Captain Strand shakes his head, taking a half-step back, and Marjan and Paul’s necks crane further. “Five now,” Paul says. Then, amazed when the chief takes one whole step forward to reset the balance in his favor: “That man just does not know when to quit.”

“This is getting painful. Should we go in after him? Emergency extraction?”

“Do you _want_ to hear about the chief’s bee hives? Because if you do, we can go over there right now.”

Marjan finally looks away from the study in front of her, a frown curving her brows. “I thought it was chickens?”

“It’s guineafowls. He’s got a whole flock of them,” Nancy says, arriving with soot up her arms and a glint in her eyes. “No one warned Captain Vega before they were properly introduced, so I tried to go in after her.”

“And?” Paul prompts the obvious lead.

“And I ended up hearing about the mating call of the guinea for ten minutes with accompanying auditory examples. As a medical professional, I can’t advise you get within ten feet of that conversation.”

Marjan almost chokes on her laugh in an effort to smother it in the collar of her turnout coat. “C’mon, Nance, that’s funny,” she argues when her girlfriend shoots her a withering look that’s hardly potent for the way it lapses into something warm when their eyes meet. Marjan has to resist the urge to find the print of Nancy’s upturned lips against her own, but it’s made infinitely easier knowing the team isn’t five feet away.

They learned the hard way that the firehouse is populated by a slew of twelve-year-olds. Marjan had made the slip as she was coming on shift and Nancy coming off, and the rest of the afternoon devolved into the boys passing _love you, babe_ back and forth every time they exited _or_ entered a room. Marjan still laughs when she thinks about it, but it’s enough to make her keep her hands to herself when she’s within sneezing distance of being on the clock.

Nancy joins Captain Strand watch, but when it shows no further signs of slowing down, she presses a hand to Marjan’s elbow—which Paul, as Marjan’s best friend, is honor-bound not to comment on—to excuse herself. “I have to get back. Just be ready to take off if it even looks like there’s a lull, otherwise you’ll be here all night.”

“I’ll see you back at the firehouse,” Marjan murmurs, eyes flicking down to Nancy’s lips, which lift slightly when she notices.

“Can’t wait,” she promises.

She gets a few yards away before Paul’s head ticks up. At first Marjan thinks he’s done politely tuning their conversation out, but then he ignores her to hail Nancy’s back, “You’re coming to Grace’s party tonight, right?”

Nancy turns on her heel, navigating the parking lot with the same practiced ease she always carries herself with. “I’m gonna meet y’all there a little later. Judd’s got me on a _secret detail.”_

As if on cue, Judd’s voice rises from the back of the rig, “Ah hell, Nancy, it’s _secret_ for a reason!” and it makes Nancy’s whole body dance with ebullient laughter. Her tongue peeks between her teeth and she stumbles back over a faltered step. With her hair coming loose from the ponytail she stuck it in at the beginning of her shift and the remnants of the fire on her, she looks like the best thing Marjan’s ever seen, and it makes her heart run double-time.

Nancy waves and repeats, “Later!” before turning around to jog toward Captain Vega.

Paul sticks his elbow in Marjan’s side, bringing her back. “Looks like sixth time’s the charm. Let’s go.”

When she looks up, she sees Captain Strand scurrying toward them. His hands, purposefully hidden by his body, shooing them into the rig.

Paul rounds the front as Marjan hauls herself up, and they slip into their seats at the same time. They make brief eye contact as they tug their belts on, but it’s enough to crack them up. It’s the kind of laughter that makes you gasp for breath into a burning chest, the kind that gets set off with the faintest act of suppression, and makes your throat ache for hours after. They’re still laughing when the doors in the back slam shut and Captain Strand’s voice breaks through in that cheered tone.

“Firefighter Strickland, if you’d be so kind as to get us the hell out of here.”

“Will do, Cap.”

Without an accomplice, Marjan’s mirth wanes back to respectable levels. She leans her head back against her seat, eyes finding the cloud peaks as they pull out of the parking lot and onto the street. There are still faint strands of smoke in the sky, slips of gray that, along with the water stains and the heady smell, will mark this place for the hours and days to come in varying degrees. They’ll say _something happened here_ , and the yellow tape will go up around it to force caution and curiosity in equal handfuls. But that, at least, is something she understands.

Fire comes in and it overtakes, it eats away at the support beams and topples the building, but it’s never the building itself that matters. It’s the people inside, the ones who don’t make it out just as much as it is the ones who do. And the ones who do, they’re brand new, looking up at a blue sky they don’t know anymore. It’ll take time, time that treads on so slowly and falls back a step or two or ten, but one day they’ll get to look up at the sky again in wonder. They’ll get to pull their loved ones close and laugh until their sides hurt and remember instead of relive. That’s the promise of life, and she, for one, is glad she gets to keep it with this crew, with these friends, with all these people and all this love.

“So, Judd,” she calls into her headset. “What’s this about you putting my girlfriend on a secret detail?”

A beat, wind washing past them, and then all hell breaking loose, spurred by, “I can’t trust any of y’all to get a damn cake safely from one place to the other! I've seen the way you drive.”

“Oh, party foul, Ryder,” TK and Captain Strand call in unison, identical down to the inflection on the syllables, and it delights Marjan to no end. Just for that, she can’t help but add herself to the fray.

**Author's Note:**

> i'm on tumblr @cauldronoflove !!


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